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Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
1. These headline writers never learn. Here's another misleading headline.
Tue Jul 29, 2014, 04:04 PM
Jul 2014

Coal is an energy source because you can mine it and burn it. Uranium is an energy source because you can mine it and use it for fission. The sun is an energy source because you can put up a solar heater to heat water, or a photovoltaic panel to generate electricity.

Hydrogen is not an energy "source" because you can't mine it or find it anywhere. It's a way of storing or transferring energy. You use some other energy source to generate an energy input so that you can obtain hydrogen, then at another time and/or place you burn the hydrogen to get back some of the energy that you put into it.

Even worse, it's not just the headline. The full linked article would leave many readers with a false impression.

It's interesting enough to know that Japan is looking into hydrogen in a big way. I just wish the writers were a little more knowledgeable about the subject.

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